Author: John Kaufmann

Saratoga Springs is finally coming to the end of the ordeal of having to listen to disinformation from Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi and Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran. Still, even for them, the chaos and dishonesty they have engaged in discussing the mess Sanghvi created with the 2026 budget takes a lot of nerve.

In the November 20, 2025, edition of the Saratogian, its readers were subjected to the magical thinking of Sanghvi and Moran, in which events are twisted beyond recognition.

Sanghvi’s Twisted Self-Congratulations

According to the city’s charter, the Finance Commissioner is supposed to spend months working with each department’s executive staff to craft the next year’s budget. The budget is supposed to reflect the Commissioner’s best thinking on balancing the city’s resources with its anticipated income.

In October, with less than two months until the budget’s required adoption date, Sanghvi suddenly announced that the city was in a deep financial hole. Her response was classic partisan abuse. To close this hole, Sanghvi’s (a Democrat) proposed budget eliminated funding for the Mayor’s (a Republican running for office) department for non-profits, most of which were devoted to homelessness, as well as other key services like school crossing guards.

This is what Sanghvi told the Saratogian on October 9, 2025,

“I could not take money from our police or public works department and then give that money to nonprofits. This is not an easy decision. This is not something we did lightly, but we had no other way of doing this.”

In this same article, she dismissed the idea of raising the property tax rate to address the shortfall:

Another option Sanghvi pointed out, though she added that she did not (sic) believe “city residents should not be facing the burden of rising property taxes every year” and that “2% is more than enough.”(Emphasis added)

Saratogian Newspaper

Sanghvi doesn’t explain where the money will come from to put the $900,000.00 back in the budget. Magic!

According to the November 25, 2025 Times Union, Sanghvi transferred $1,810,000.00 from the city’s fund balance (reserves) and $500,000.00 from the city’s retirement reserve. So we will run a deficit of at least $2,310,000.00 next year. I have no idea whether it is prudent to take $500,000.00 away from the city’s retirement reserve. It is troubling that Sanghvi supposedly overestimated by $500,000.00 what would be needed next year to meet our obligation regarding the retirement system.

Sanghvi’s Magical Thinking

As it turned out, the final budget was very different from her original proposal. In addition to raiding the city’s reserves and its retirement funding, Sanghvi reversed her position on raising taxes. Her new budget will now benefit by raising taxes by 4.53%. This, of course, comes after the election, during which she was campaigning for a Count Supervisor position.

It is important to note that based on Sanghvi’s budget, the city ran a deficit of $3,500,000.00 during the current (2025) year. It is rather stunning that Sanghvi only revealed this fiscal hole after her successful campaign for County Supervisor.

I’m sorry that, for many, the Saratogian articles are behind a paywall, as it is impossible to summarize the rambling, contradictory remarks Sanghvi made to the Saratogian in defense of what she did. Sanghvi effusively congratulated herself and her work with the community for reinstating her own cuts.

Take this statement from Sanghvi:

They [JK: The community?] said very clearly that they wanted to fund the RISE shelter, the homeless, Franklin Community Center and all these other organizations, which are doing incredible work in our community and that they were fine with the 4.5% tax increase. I think it was important for the public to come to that conclusion themselves and say, ‘yes, we want this tax increase to pay for this. And I think that’s sort of the goal that we achieved here.”

This may be the way Sanghvi wants this debacle remembered, but it is not what actually happened.

In fact, Sanghvi faced significant pushback from Mayor Safford, Public Works Commissioner Chuck Marshall, and Commissioner Coll on her budget from the start.

This is Coll’s recollection:

As soon as I saw the Comprehensive Budget unilaterally presented by Commissioner Sanghvi, I knew we were in trouble. The proposal included no funding for school crossing guards, contractual obligations, or our vital nonprofits such as the homeless shelter and the Senior Center. I strongly advocated for a tax increase to our legal limit (4.5%) and for using fund balance to support our nonprofits. Fortunately, Mayor Safford, Commissioner Marshall, and I reached a consensus to address the needs of our most vulnerable residents, as Commissioner Moran was absent from this particular budget workshop. The video of this meeting, dated 11/14/2025, will corroborate and set forth the truth of this matter, including that Commissioner Sanghvi’s budget did not provide funding for these nonprofits from the outset.

Commissioner Tim Coll

Dillon Moran’s Memory Hole

Moran was the sole vote against adopting the budget. He attributed his vote to the budget’s failure to include funds to address the city’s alleged water issues, issues he claimed he raised when he ran for DPW Commissioner seven years ago.

According to the Saratogian article, Moran said:

“The budget does nothing to put forward money to invest in the most important thing we provide to our citizens, which is clean, potable, consistent drinking water. I, in good conscience, cannot vote for that budget. The biggest issue facing this community. Period.”

Moran to the Saratogian

So if Moran was alarmed about the lack of money in the budget regarding water, why didn’t he offer an amendment to address his allegation?

Instead, he offered the following shrill warning to the Saratogian:

“The budget does not include money to address the issues in any sort of meaningful way. We are facing a $40 million investment that I called for seven years ago, when it was $24 million and it’s $40 now. If we don’t do something about it today, it’s going to be 50 (million), and then 60 (million), and then we’re going to have a major failure and then big sections of our community could be without drinking water.

“And if they’re without drinking water for a certain period of time, and those pipes sit dry, that’s it.”

Dillon Moran

Apparently, Moran does not remember that his campaign for Commissioner of Public Works at the time was deep-sixed when it was revealed that a campaign mailer he had sent included a forged letter purportedly from the New York State Department of Health supporting his wildly false accusations about the state of the city’s water supply.

Here is a post documenting Moran’s folly in which he falsified the NYSHD letter.

This is the mailer containing the forged letter from the New York State Department of Health that Moran sent out in his attack on the late Public Works Commissioner Skip Scirocco.

This blog has documented the numerous missteps in handling the city’s finances by Minita Sanghvi since she became the Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Finance.

Under the city charter, Sanghvi is responsible for preparing the city’s budget each year, which must be adopted by November 30. As this deadline approaches, Sanghvi’s years of mismanaging the city’s finances have finally brought the city to the verge of a financial crisis. How severe a crisis it is, even now, is hard to determine, though, as the financial indicators Sanghvi should be providing are missing.

One of the key documents that should have been an important tool for the Commissioner to use in understanding the city’s financial condition and planning for the 2026 budget was due September 30. As of the time of this blog’s posting, the audit has finally been placed on the agenda for the November 18, 2025, meeting; however, the link to the actual audit included in the agenda does not work.

The tardiness of this audit is not new for Sanghvi. The 2023 audit also missed the September 30, 2024, deadline and was not submitted until November 7. This was coincidentally only days after the November 2024 election in which Sanghvi was running for the State Senate. As the audit included damaging items regarding her handling of the city’s finances, it is no small wonder that she delayed releasing it beyond the required date and after the election.

In addition to tardiness, Sanghvi is criticized in the audit for failing to follow “accounting practices generally accepted in the United States.” She blamed this problem on “a personnel vacancy.”

In her response to the audit (below), Sanghvi admits that she had failed to meet the “…deadline for the submission of the Single Audit.”

You would think that, having been criticized in the 2023 audit for being late, she would be particularly diligent about ensuring the timeliness of the 2024 audit release. You would be wrong. She is late for the second consecutive year.

I am unaware of any previous Finance Commissioner failing to submit the audit on time, let alone failing to do so twice.

I contacted Commissioner Sanghvi, asking why, yet again, the audit is so late this year. In a phone conversation, she blamed the problem on the alleged failure of the Mayor’s office and the Department of Public Works.

I contacted Deputy Mayor JoAnne Kiernan and DPW Commissioner Chuck Marshall regarding Sanghvi’s allegation. Both officials told me that Sanghvi had not contacted them about any missing information.

I then sent the following email to Sanghvi, requesting any documentation that she or her staff had provided to the executive staff in either the Mayor’s office or the DPW regarding the urgent need for missing information.

The Email

John Kaufmann <	Tue, Nov 11, 7:00 PM (3 days ago)
to Minita, Tim, Dillon, John, Charles.Marshall

  Minita:

Thank you for returning my call.  As you are aware, we discussed the city’s lack of an audit.  BST, our auditor, was required to provide the city with its audit by September 30.  In turn, your office was required to submit the audit to the city council and the public by November 1.   

You blamed the failure to meet the city’s deadlines on the mayor’s office and the Department of Public Works. 

On September 25, you emailed DPW about missing information.  They informed you that the information you were looking for had been uploaded to a folder shared by DPW and Finance on August 7.  You had the information. If there was any confusion about the information, please let me know why you waited until September 25, five days before the audit was supposed to be completed, to contact DPW?

Regarding the mayor’s office, you never contacted the mayor or his deputy about this issue.  Apparently, someone from your office has contacted the planning department regarding a matter involving grants.  (In the previous audit, you were criticized for your failure to properly manage the fiscal elements of these grants.)  Notably, your office did not raise the issue until mid-October.  As the audit was required to be completed by September 30, can you explain why this was not addressed earlier?  If this was pressing and not being done, why didn’t you email the mayor or his deputy?  Please provide any documentation regarding the attempts made by your department to obtain this information.  

Audits are at the heart of accountability and of transparency. What’s most alarming is that you do not seem particularly concerned about the failure of Finance to provide this audit, which should have been available before the election.  Given the criticisms in the auditor’s 2023 report, one must wonder whether the 2024 audit will contain unflattering findings.

My key question to you is why you did not advise the council that you were unable to meet your obligation under the charter to provide them with this vital document?

Radio Silence

As usual, I received no response. I submit that there was no response because Sanghvi has no documentation. She is guilty of an inept attempt to cover up the failure in her office. I do not think it is unreasonable to consider that she has suppressed the latest 2024 audit report because it would reveal more problems in her office, particularly in a year when she was running for Supervisor.

Sanghvi’s October Surprise

As the Commissioner of Finance, Sanghvi is responsible for monitoring the city’s spending.

In May, the city agreed to fund RISE (the provider of a homeless shelter for the city) for approximately half a million dollars. Sanghvi not only voted for the resolution, but she waxed on about the value of their service for our city.

In October, Sanghvi presented a budget that cut not only the funding for RISE, but also for all the not-for-profits the city had been supporting for years, including the Senior Center. The reason? The city was suddenly facing a $3,500,000.00 deficit for the current fiscal year, which is not yet over.

How could she not have seen this coming?

By May, when she supported spending $500,000.00 on RISE, she should have been aware of the looming budget problems.

It is a testament to her mismanagement that, up until October, when she was finally required to prepare the budget for next year, she said nothing at the Council table about the financial threat facing the city.

It is worth noting that Sanghvi was warned last fall, during the preparation of the 2025 budget, that her fiscal assumptions were overly optimistic. At the time, Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll urged her to raise the city tax rate to 2%, as allowed by state law. Although she had raised taxes her previous two years in office, in 2024, she was running for State Senate and refused.

As has become painfully obvious, her budget for 2025 badly underestimated expenses and overestimated income. This was not her first time doing this.

As this blog has documented over the last four years, Sanghvi is far more interested in drama at the Council table than in devoting the very demanding time required to fully understand the city’s finances.

Understanding Just How Bad Sanghvi’s Budgeting Is

Under our charter, the Finance Commissioner is responsible for preparing the city’s annual budget. This budget is intended to be the result of thorough analysis and consultations with other city departments. While it is expected to be revised once it is proposed to the Council, it is intended to be a serious document that the Finance Commissioner would want to be adopted as is. This is because, unless a majority of the Council overrules the Commissioner’s proposal, it is automatically the city’s budget for the following year.

Sanghvi’s desire to defund all the not-for-profits (RISE, the senior citizens’ center, Judge Vero’s outreach/homeless court, and even school crossing guards) was supposed to reflect her determination that while these organizations were valuable, other city needs would take precedence.

Coincidentally, in an election year, these major high-profile nonprofit organizations that were cut are funded by the Mayor’s office, and these cuts were often portrayed as coming from the Mayor, not Sanghvi.

According to reports, although the public has yet to see the changes, Sanghvi has reportedly now restored these cuts.

Sanghvi Blames Other Departments For The Failure Of Her Department and Gibberish and Confusion Over What The City’s Reserves Are

As of this Friday, November 14, Sanghvi was still not taking responsibility for the late audit and continued to demonstrate a fundamental ignorance of the city’s finances.

At the pre-agenda meeting on Friday morning, Sanghvi again blamed unnamed departments for the audit delay. She informed her colleagues that her office had met with the auditors in mid-October to discuss the remaining information they needed. As the audit was supposed to be completed by the end of September, she self-documents the tardiness of her own office in completing the audit.

In a budget hearing that same day, Sanghvi was asked to provide the Council with accurate information on the city’s fund balance. The “Unassigned Fund Balance” is the technical term for the city’s reserves. In addition to raising taxes, one way to address the city’s deficit is to tap into its reserve fund. It is obviously important to know the size of the reserve in order to determine how it may be used to address the city’s deficit.

In this clip, Commissioner Coll attempts to determine from Sanghvi how much the city has in reserve to address the proposed budget shortfalls.

The Finance Commissioner serves as the chief financial officer (CFO) of the city. It’s hard to believe, as documented in the following video, Sanghvi was unable to answer Commissioner Coll’s repeated requests regarding the city’s reserves to address the budget for next year. As her frustrated response indicated, she did not know, and this is particularly glaring because, given the repeated requests for this number, she should have had the figure readily available.

Further, note how she distances herself from her staff in the video clip. When trying to explain what the city’s reserves are, she notes that the numbers she is getting are from her staff referring to her deputy and budget director as “they” as her budget director is shaking her head. So these are not numbers that she has analyzed and that constitute her financial analysis. Apparently, she is unable to read these reports on her own and adopt them as her own.

After thirty years with the city’s Department of Public Works, Brian Wager retires next Saturday.

Those of you who use the transfer station to dispose of your garbage and recycling, have probably been assisted by Brian. Always patient and good-humored, Brian was always available to give a helping hand.

When you see Brian, thank him for his service and wish him well in his retirement.

This is a mailer BK Keramati sent to Saratoga Springs voters.

Up until he began his campaign for Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Public Works, my encounters with BK Keramati over the years had always been pleasant.

While I supported his opponent, the current Commissioner, Chuck Marshall, I believed Mr. Keramati did not have the history of toxic behavior that other candidates endorsed by the local Democrats this year had. I assumed, therefore, that if elected, he could be counted on to interact civilly with his fellow Council members even if he did not always agree with them.

I was unprepared then for his toxic mailings and social media assaults on his opponent. His campaign became just another example of the ugly and vituperative behavior that the city has endured from the Democratic leadership over the last four years. What is sad is that, given Keramati’s reputation up until this point and his vigorous door-to-door campaign, he might well have won without stooping to this kind of dirty politics. Instead, he focused on false statements and assumptions to run a campaign that essentially was an attempt at the character assassination of his opponent.

The Water Report

One of Keramati’s main themes was to accuse Chuck Marshall of “hiding” a study of Loughberry Lake. Many of the issues with this aspect of Mr. Keramati’s disturbing campaign were explored in an earlier article.

Suffice it to say that since Chuck Marshall immediately gave BK the report when asked and without making him FOIL for it (something that would have meant BK would have not gotten the report until after the election), it is difficult to understand how Mr. Keramati could, with any integrity, describe Marshall as being “caught covering up a serious report on our water quality” as he does in his mailer.

Fooling The Public

To provide credibility to his accusations, Keramati doctored an image of the Saratogian Newspaper (and others)in his mailers. This headline never existed. The tear at the bottom of the image was meant to convey authenticity.

An Assault On Marshall’s Integrity

Chuck received a considerable amount of money from, among others, individuals in the real estate industry.

BK could have legitimately pointed this out and raised questions about the extent to which they might influence Chuck’s tenure should he have won.

Instead, BK’s mailers went over the top, asserting that “he (Chuck) does what he is told” and he is “a tool of corporate interests and puts their priorities ahead of the people.”

Keramati provides no examples of Chuck having used his position to aid donors.

To the contrary, Chuck has had the opposite reputation as Planning Board Chair, where he was known for creating an environment of inclusion and respect, working with a board of diverse people, both politically and socially.

I recently spoke to Bill McTygue, who served on the Planning Board with Chuck. Bill had been on the Democratic Committee and probably supported Keramati, yet he was quite complimentary of Chuck’s leadership. I asked him specifically whether he observed any effort by Chuck to manipulate the board in favor of any developers. Bill said “no.” Bill observed that Chuck’s focus was on building a consensus among the board to make decisions.

So what does it say about Keramati’s character that he would tell voters that Marshal is a guy who “does what he’s told”?

Likewise, Keramati cites a donation Elise Stefanik made to Chuck’s campaign as evidence that “Chuck is a political partisan who goes along with his MAGA Republican leaders…putting politics ahead of the people.” Keramati again cites no evidence of this and appears uninterested in acknowledging that Chuck has publicly stated he did not vote for Donald Trump.

The Chuck Marshall I Wish People Had An Opportunity To Know.

Here is an anecdote that may help people to understand what kind of person Chuck Marshall is in comparison with the characterization of him put forward by Mr. Keramati.

When Chuck defeated Hank Kuczyinski, he inherited Michele Hill-Davis as his executive assistant, whom Kuczynski had hired. In addition to having been selected by his opponent, Ms. Hill-Davis is an active committee member of the city’s Democratic Committee.

I know for a fact that quite a few people told Chuck he needed to replace her. They argued that as his executive assistant, she would be privy to all the goings-on in his office. In effect, she would be a spy.

In classic Chuck style, he refused. He said he would not fire anyone without giving them a chance to demonstrate their ability to perform the work. Ms. Hill-Davis is still his executive assistant.

Unlike Keramati, Marshall’s campaign also reflected his character. It was positive without a breath of attack and recrimination.

Hope?

Keramati worked closely with Gordon Boyd, who energetically echoed and amplified Keramati’s campaign claims on his Facebook page, and Achim Bergmann, a professional political operative with national campaign experience and a member of the local Democratic committee. Both men BK chose to work with have a history of running toxic campaigns.

One can only hope that Keramati will show more civility and integrity at the Council table than he did in his campaign.

This blog has previously reported on the two years during which Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran promised numerous dates for deploying the Short Term Rental (STR) portal, which property owners can use to register.

According to the timestamp on his campaign Facebook page tonight (November 3), on the eve of the election, Moran claims that he deployed the software last Friday (October 31) and that his office is already processing applications.

This is a screenshot from Moran’s campaign Facebook page. The red line was added.

The problem is that, according to both the available documents and his remarks at the October 31 pre-agenda meeting, it was not up on Friday.

In this clip from the Friday meeting, he tells his colleagues that it would take twenty-four hours for the vendor to deploy it. He then says, presumably because the next day is the weekend, it would not be up until Tuesday.

So if it takes twenty-four hours and if he advised his colleagues of this on Friday morning, it could not possibly have been available that night.

In addition, this time stamped city website page from Saturday morning, November 1, shows that the page had not been updated since August,

Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran has promoted himself as the successful architect of short-term rental management. In fact, his campaign mailing focuses on this as one of his main achievements.

A casual scrutiny of what he has actually done and not done reveals a very different story.

Moran had the city purchase the software for a portal to be used by short-term rental owners to register with the city. It was purchased on February 6, 2024. The cost for using the software for the first year was $56,000.00. It was not deployed, so the city wasted the money for that year. On February 6, 2025, the city paid for the next year in the amount of $55,000.00. By his own admission, the portal will not be functional until the end of the year, so that is another $55,000.00 wasted.

During this period, he successfully received support from the city’s civil service to hire an additional staff member to handle STRs. As the software has not been deployed, hiring anyone was premature. He also successfully raised the salaries of employees in his office because the alleged workload for STR was added to their responsibilities.

Accounts employee X was hired on July 26, 2023, at a salary of $66,668.00. On February 20,2024, her salary was increased to $83,380.00 to compensate her for her additional duties with STR. The new budget crafted by Minita Sanghvi raises her salary to $92,687.00

Moran has routinely announced at City Council meetings one date after another that the STR software would be deployed. In fact, on October 20, 2025, at the League of Women Voters forum, he announced it would be up the next day. Of course it was not. The latest date he has announced is now December 31, 2025.

There is further confusion because the annual registration date, which involves a fee, is in June. Therefore, if the owner of an STR registers on January 1, 2026, (it remains to be seen if the portal will be operational), they will be required to register at the full rate for a year, with their registration expiring in June.

There is also the problem that these STRs must be inspected by the city, and it remains to be seen when this will happen and how long it will take.

Many of the folks with short-term rentals are, not surprisingly, frustrated and angry at the mess that Moran has created.

This is yet another example of Moran’s desire for headlines and his utter failure to actually manage.

The Saratoga Springs Democratic Party has sent out their final campaign mailer. Interestingly, it doesn’t tout their platform or even mention who their candidates are. No, the message the local Dems want to leave their audience with is its phony claim that One Saratoga is a tool of the MAGA GOP. This is the local Dems oft repeated big beautiful lie that they hope will win them this election. The Dems do not seem to realize that this kind of over-the-top attack only serves to damage their local committee’s reputation and their endorsed candidates. If they would lie so blatantly in this kind of mailing, how can people trust what their candidates will say if they are elected/re-elected?

The best antidote to this kind of campaigning is to share with the public who One Saratoga is. So here are two members of One Saratoga who the local Dems want you to believe are really MAGA operatives. You decide.

Courtney DeLeonardis, Chair of One Saratoga, Addresses The Voters

Jane Weihe, Campaign Assistant, One Saratoga Addresses The Voters

Just A Few Highlights From Minita Sanghvi’s 2026 proposed budget.

·         Senior citizen center support = zeroed out

·         Funding for Judge Vero’s homeless (outreach court) = zeroed out

·         Crossing guards for our city schools = zeroed out

·         Funding for RISE for the homeless = zeroed out

·         Most part-time staff and seasonal staff = zeroed out

·         Money for training the planning staff or the building department = zeroed out

·         Secretary for the planning board = zeroed out

·         The overtime budget for special events = zeroed out

·         Uniforms: funding cut from $57,000.00 to $15,000.00, leaving inadequate funds to meet contractual obligations to the union.

Reader, You Were Warned

Under the commission form of government, the Commissioner of Finance is responsible for crafting the budget for the following year. Unless a majority of the Council votes to overrule the Finance Commissioner to amend the budget, the original budget becomes the final budget.

As should be obvious, preparing budgets requires a solemn commitment on the part of the Finance Commissioner to be deeply informed about city finances and to oversee the collection of key information. This is an enormously demanding process.

I have repeatedly warned that Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi has been derelict in her duties in running her office. What motivated her was performing in the drama at Council meetings in her role as Commissioner. She has been uninterested in or unwilling to take on the highly demanding job of managing the city’s finances.

Sanghvi’s automatic email response informs whoever has written to her that the Commissioner of Finance position is part-time and that, if the correspondence is important, contact Sanghvi’s Deputy. This is truly emblematic of how she views her job and how we got here.

The critical issue is that unless a majority of Council members agree to a different budget, the one crafted by the Finance Office will be the budget for the following year. This is why crafting a good budget in the first place is so important.

Before Commissioner Sanghvi, the budget was crafted over many months. The Budget Director would meet with the Deputies and their Commissioners to review what they were spending money on, their contractual obligations to vendors and city unions, and the legal limits on the respective departments’ obligations. There was also an analysis by the Budget Director working with the Deputies to project potential revenue for their respective departments. The finance people would also correlate their findings with the budgets from previous years. All of this required multiple follow-up meetings over a protracted period.

Beginning in October, budget workshops were held for each department. The purpose of these budget workshops traditionally was to fine-tune a thoroughly prepared budget. Not with Commissioner Sanghvi; her colleagues at the Council table received a rudimentary document listing slashed items meant to balance the city’s revenues with its expenses.

As it takes a majority vote to amend Sanghvi’s budget, the other Commissioners begin scrambling to negotiate not only with her but also with each other to secure a majority to fix her mess.

Basically, this budget is being written largely from scratch. That is how, in this case, the city got a budget with no money for school crossing guards.

Taking Care of Herself and Her Friend Dillon Moran

What Sanghvi has done over the past three years is to arbitrarily cut items and exaggerate income until she arrives at a budget that appears to balance with the anticipated city income.

These policies have reflected who her allies are.

Consider this chart that shows how much she anticipated each department would raise in income to contribute to her budget. It documents not only her favoritism but also how little she understood the alleged revenue streams for her department and Dillon Moran’s.

For example, her 2024 budget projected that the short-term rental program in the Accounts Department would raise $250,000.00. It raised zero. It budgeted $250,000.00 in cannabis tax revenue. It raised zero. (Not coincidentally, both these projections came from her ally, Dillon Moran)

During her first years in office, when her Democratic party ran the Council, her generosity was breathtaking. Anything that her colleagues, Ron Kim, Jim Montagnino, Jason Golub, and Moran, wanted was no problem.

During this period, Sanghvi showered repeated bonuses on their deputies and funded numerous new positions in their departments and in hers.

Magical Thinking Instead Of Real Analysis

Commissioner Sanghvi’s approach to budgeting is more about chaos than rigorously crafting how the city should spend its money.

This is no exaggeration; it is the grim reality. Each fall, as the budget was coming due, Sanghvi would throw together budgets that ignored contracts, state law, and the lobbying of her fellow Commissioners. If you watch the budget workshops for each department, you will see that Sanghvi relied on these meetings rather than her staff’s own research to identify which budget items violated city contracts, state law, or required the replacement of key equipment.

Forget planning; what followed were crazy events in which the departments tried to reason with Sanghvi about why her appropriations were not workable. Sanghvi, who is truly clueless, would arbitrarily fund some activities while rejecting others.

Take overtime in the Public Safety Department. Sanghvi slashed overtime. This money is essential for special events, as event venues must operate in a safe environment that requires additional police and fire protection.

This is no way to run a city the size of Saratoga Springs. The proof of Sanghvi’s folly is the 2025 budget. This city is running out of money.

Important Deadline Missed

The city’s quarterly financial report is a key document because it provides an ongoing status report on the fiscal condition of the city.

From the city charter:

4.4.9 of the city charter requires that “the commissioner of finance shall submit to the Council, for each quarter, a written financial report on the status of the City’s financial plan. Such financial plan shall include a comparison of estimated and actual income and expenditures to date and shall be submitted within 45 days after the end of each quarter. Each quarterly summary shall be forwarded to the City Clerk’s office and shall be available for public review.

This is a bit in the weeds. The final quarterly report has been routinely delayed for many years beyond the 45-day requirement. It is submitted after the report on the city’s finances to the New York State Comptroller, which is due on April 30 each year. Past Finance Commissioners, upon filing the city’s annual report on its financial condition with the Comptroller, have then submitted the report summary to the City Council shortly thereafter, as required by the charter.

This is an essential report for assessing the city’s fiscal health. It includes the fund balance. The “fund balance” is the amount of money the city has in reserve. It assesses how each department did in staying within its department budget.

This year, Sanghvi never submitted the preliminary financial report (fourth quarter for 2024). Sanghvi quietly posted the report on October 17, 2025, almost 6 months after it should have been submitted to the Council.

This report provides key information on trends in the city’s financial condition. It should have revealed that the city’s spending rate was unsustainable. It should have prompted a serious discussion months ago as to what needed to be done in light of excess spending over revenue.

Hang On!

I have no idea where all this will end up. I am sure there will be a large tax increase (Sanghvi raised taxes in her first two budgets, but for obvious political reasons, she refused to raise taxes when she was running for the state Senate, and now that she is running for Supervisor), and Sanghvi will draw money from the city’s reserves–if she can figure out how much money is there.

At the September 2, 2025, Saratoga Springs City Council meeting, BK Keramati and Gordon Boyd attacked Commissioner of Public Works Chuck Marshall with the most soaring, exaggerated rhetoric, alleging that he is “hiding” a threat to the city’s water from the city’s residents and the Council. They cite a recent study of the city’s reservoir by Barton and Laguidice (B&L), which they claim Marshall is trying to keep the public from knowing about.

Boyd tries to gin up the threat on his Facebook page with phony dire warnings to support Keramati

In the video below, Keramati tells the Council that when he read the report on the reservoir, “I couldn’t believe my eyes.” He tells the Council he can’t believe that Marshall had not advised the Council and the public of the looming catastrophe. He offers the same shrill claim in a campaign mailing he has sent out attacking Marshall. The problem is that their colleagues, Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran and former Public Works Commissioner Hank Kuczynski, were informed by the consulting firm of these very issues over a year ago. So much for hiding threats.

Who Is Hiding This “Catastrophe”?

Unfortunately, Boyd and Keramati leave out of their hysterical narratives the fact that Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran’s office had received correspondence from B&L in September of 2024, more than a year ago, advising Moran of the very same problems they are now claiming to expose. The DPW Commissioner’s position was vacant, and Moran was overseeing the department. Moran was aware and silent about the very same problems Keramati and Boyd claim Marshall is now supposedly hiding.

In addition, Kuczynski, after becoming Commissioner of Public Works, received an internal email acknowledging the same problems with the reservoir back on December 4, 2024. Using Keramati’s and Boyd’s logic, Kuczynski also”hid” the threat from his colleagues and the public.

Let me be clear, I do not see Moran or Kuczynski as perpetrators of a cover-up any more than Marshall is. This is all a made-up crisis by Boyd and Keramati unfortunately meant to alarm voters as part of Keramati’s election campaign.

The Studies

Loughbury Lake, the city’s reservoir, has had many challenges. Early in the twentieth century, Loughbury Lake had a variety of manufacturing operations on its shores. The last functioning industrial business on the lake was Congress Gas and Oil. The U.S. Department of Environmental Protection forced this company to remove its dated storage facility in the 1980s.

Studies dating back to the 1980s have warned of potential problems with Loughbury Lake. Back on May 2, 2023, the city hired the consulting firm Barton and Laguidice (B&L) to again study this source of water for the city.

All the studies have identified problematic trends in the lake’s declining capacity. Due to toxic metals in the lake’s sediment that must not be disturbed, the reduction in the reservoir’s capacity also reduces its safe yield. The lake must maintain a certain volume to prevent stirring up the bottom.

It would have been helpful if Boyd and Keramati had acknowledged that, while the report recommends we pursue additional water sources, the water we do have is safe.

The Saratoga County Water Program Staff offers similar findings.

Marshall Has Been Vigorously Seeking A Long-Term Solution

Soon after Marshall was sworn in as Commissioner of Public Works on March 4, 2025, he met with representatives of B&L (the final report had not yet been completed) and, at B&L’s prompting, issued an RFP on March 7 for a study of actions the city could take to address the need for additional water. The consulting firm CT Male was awarded the contract for the work on June 3,2025.

Marshall is working with CT Male as they seek other sources of drinking water.

The Attack

When I asked Boyd on his Facebook page why Marshall would “hide” the report from the public, Boyd responded, “Good question, perhaps you might ask him.” This shows the depth of Boyd’s cynical, cavalier attitude toward making accusations without proof. Boyd did not care whether his attacks were fair or true; the point was to damage Marshall to promote his candidate, Keramati.

The only thing Keramati offered as he addressed the Council (see video below) was that the report should have been made public before work on the 2026 budget began. What Kermati failed to grasp was that the B&L report revealed the problems in the reservoir but not the solutions. Without proposed solutions, it is impossible to determine a cost to use when crafting the budget. It is hard to believe that, given his engineering background and that he had read the B&L study, he does not grasp that, without a proposed plan—the purpose of the current study by CT Male—it is impossible to determine what correcting the reservoir problems will cost.

A Sober Look

Among the many false claims Boyd makes on his Facebook page is that Marshall issued the RFP for actions the city could take to address the city’s water issues on February 13, “weeks before, not after, the B&L report was handed in last March.”

Indicative of the way this whole business was thrown together, Boyd does not even have the correct date. The RFP was issued on March 7 and not February 13. Marshall was not even in office on February 13. He was sworn in by Judge Vero on March 4.

The actual date the B&L report was delivered to the city, despite Boyd’s odd concern about the alleged date conflict, is not important. As the city engineer’s correspondence above makes clear, B&L was in close communication with the city about the issues it was uncovering during its research.

When the city has an agreement for a study like the B&L one, there is regular communication between the consultants and the city, well before the final report is issued.

Working On A Solution

Marshall won his seat on January 28, 2025. Five weeks later and only days after being sworn in, after consulting with B&L, he issued the RFP to pursue a solution to the city’s water issues.

Unfortunately for the city, the watershed that sustains the reservoir is in Wilton and Greenfield. Marshall’s staff has been meeting with officials from these municipalities to discuss what they might do to help address toxins in groundwater that flows into the reservoir.

Commissioner Marshall told me that before any dredging or other actions can be initiated regarding the reservoir, the work on the new dam for the reservoir must be completed. When driving along Excelsior Avenue, you can see the Bast/Hatfield signs along the protective fence. The heavy equipment behind the fence is being used for the new dam.

Cheap Shots

So, Marshall has been proactive in addressing the watershed issue. In talking to the Commissioner, he told me that any public discussion of the water issue cannot be informed without the benefit of the second study on what can be done. He sees his role as analyzing both studies and submitting a proposal to the city for action supported by the two reports. Publishing the report on the problems is not helpful without some idea as to what the city must do. It is important to remember that, contrary to the false alarm Boyd and Keramati are promoting, the B&L report as well as the County have confirmed there is no immediate threat and the city’s water is perfectly fine to drink.

You may agree with Keramati about releasing the report earlier, or you may be happy with what Marshall has done.

What is, though, troubling are the shrill attacks by Boyd and Keramati assailing Marshall for “hiding” the study. This suggests a maliciousness on Marshall’s part that does not hold up under any kind of scrutiny. Boyd and Keramati would like to fool the public into thinking there is some sort of scandal which does not exist.

As noted earlier, there is no apparent motive for Marshall not to have brought the report to the Council. When Keramati requested a copy of the report, Marshall gave it to him immediately. Marshall could have required Kermati to FOIL for it, in which case Keramati would not have gotten a copy until after the election. Marshall is being open and transparent to his opponent.

Keramati and Boyd offer no proof or even speculation as to why Marshall has not yet published the report publicly. Keramati and Boyd do not acknowledge the possibility that Marshall was simply gathering all the information to both understand the scope and nature of the problems and their solutions before presenting the Council with what the city should do.

Instead, the two men try to exploit the situation by spreading fear among the city’s citizens, claiming that Marshall has a darker purpose. It is disappointing that Keramati has adopted this as his primary campaign strategy.

The Videos

I have included four videos. The first is Keramati’s presentation to the City Council. The second is Boyd’s statement to the Council, the third is Commissioner Marshall’s response. The fourth is Gordon Boyd’s yelling about his right to respond to Marshall despite the Council’s rules on public comment.

Note that Keramti asserts that the city should be using the B&L report to take action, and he is “at a loss” as to why it has not. The answer is that the B&L report only identified problems, but not solutions. It is the second RFP issued by Marshall, which is intended to produce a set of options for the city to address the issues identified by B&L. Only when the city has identified a solution to its water problems can it begin to determine the cost.